


My Heavy Heart Worn On Your Sleeve

by APgeeksout



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Bittersweet, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seth has always managed to get himself rescued from dungeons.  Even the ones of his own making.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heavy Heart Worn On Your Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedLeaderfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLeaderfic/gifts).



This was part of his punishment, Seth supposed, scuffling the toes of his boots against the uneven stone floor in an attempt to relieve the pull of his own weight on his raw wrists and burning shoulders.

The dungeons were not small, and even if they were crowded - the royal family had made more enemies even than Seth himself - there was no practical necessity for him to be sharing a cell, let alone one whose other inmate was Roman Reigns. It wasn't enough to leave him alone in his indignity, strung up by the wrists to tick off the hours until the Battleground Feast and the ceremony where the McMahon line would sacrifice him to The Conqueror to save themselves and their power.

He'd tried to flee from that fate, only to be caught and hauled back by the Devil's Favorite Vizier, and now his sentence would be to spend his remaining time in this world far beneath the palace where he'd barely gotten to taste his costly moment of glory. To wind down his last hours with the fumes from the stinking torches that cast their sallow light into the stone cell burning his eyes and lungs alike, the chains that suspended him from the ceiling clinking and rattling with every shift of his strained body. To bear all of that with Roman hunched nearby - close enough that Seth could have kicked out to touch him if not for the second loop of chain that ran from his ankle to an iron ring in the floor.

He wondered idly if they had expected that Roman would take the opportunity to thrash him, to capitalize on what would surely be a last chance to take his year's worth of grievances out of Seth's hide, or if they'd known that the former Powerhouse wasn't in condition to do much more than curl his sturdy frame protectively around his right arm and occasionally flick a glance up at Seth, grey eyes dull with pain and empty of recognition.

The beating might have been preferable, he thought, clanking his chains to drown out the familiar hiss of Roman's pained breathing. The sound drew that lost gaze back to him, and when Roman shifted against the damp wall, Seth looked again at the arm cradled against his chest. The intricate tracery of ink seemed to shift and blur, an arc of phosphorescence intermittently cutting through the swirling patterns and throwing a burst of cold light into the cell.

"What'd Wyatt do to you?" he asked, neither expecting nor getting an answer beyond that desolate stare.

They'd traveled and fought together a long time, the three of them; he'd seen Roman's magic manifest in all kinds of bizarre and amazing ways, but never anything like this. Whatever Bray Wyatt had done in the darkness and the swamps, it had left Roman in only slightly better shape than Seth expected to find himself in after the Beast Incarnate had had his fill.

The glow pulsed brighter for an instant, and a high-pitched noise escaped from the back of Roman's throat as he slumped to the floor and wrapped tighter in on himself. Seth's shoulders burned as he strained against his shackles, and it was only dimly that he registered the echo of footsteps approaching down the corridor over the rattle of his own chains.

The guard wasn't due for another round, yet; not unless Seth was losing track of time here on top of everything else.

The figure that moved into the doorway was no guard, though he was wearing one of their sober charcoal uniforms, the general-issue short-brimmed hat pulled low over blue eyes. The play of torchlight and shadows over his face as he unlocked the grating with deft fingers made him look like both a madman and a work of art.  The marble bust of a lunatic, Seth thought giddily, suddenly lightheaded with relief and dread.

"Ambrose," he breathed out, without really meaning to. Still, if Dean had heard, he didn't spare Seth any acknowledgment, instead striding into the cell to drop to the floor at Roman's side.

"Hey, big cat," he said to Roman, reaching down to pat his shoulder, and shifting easily to pin him to the floor when he started to thrash weakly under the touch. "Easy, brother," he murmured and reached inside the uniform coat, producing a small glass vial. He tore the cork out with his teeth and let it drop from his lips while his free hand tilted Roman's head so that he could tip the vial's amber contents down his throat. "Down the hatch."

The effect was immediate and violent, and Dean pulled out of the cover and turned Roman onto his side as he hacked something thick and black onto the stones. Dean gathered Roman's long hair back from his face and tied it in a loose knot, whispering something that was lost to Seth as Roman rose to his knees and continued to cough and shudder.

Dean drew back, apparently to give Roman space in his misery, sitting on his haunches and finally deigning to look up at Seth. "Fancy meeting you here," he said conversationally. "Does this mean you're grounded? Mom and Dad caught you breaking curfew?"

There were a thousand responses Seth could have spat in his face, but he held back, out of self-preservation or shame he wasn't sure.

Dean rose to his feet, cast a worried look down at Roman, who had leaned his head against the rough wall with a quiet groan, then turned an appraising eye on Seth and said "I really ought to leave you here."

Seth jutted his chin out, struggling not to shift or squirm too much in his bonds. If Dean were smart enough not to lead with his heart, he would absolutely leave him here to rot and be fed to the Beast in another day's time, but Seth was counting on his still being the man who'd held him closer than a brother, the one who, despite his protests, didn't have it in him to let somebody take more pain than they could bear. Even when they'd probably asked for every bit of it.

"But," Dean shrugged, "I'm probably gonna need you to get us through the tunnels to the surface."

That wasn't remotely true. Dean Ambrose was the most accomplished thief in the kingdom; if he didn't know all of the castle's nooks and crannies and secret access points better any given family of palace mice - better, certainly, than Seth himself - then Seth would have eaten the jeweled belt that had signified his position as the ruling family's champion.

Seth let the lie stand, and tried not to seem too pathetically grateful when Dean leaned over to fit the guard's key into the lock securing the chain around his ankle. Before he'd settled his best implacable mask into place, Dean was on his feet and stretching long and lean against him to reach the fastenings at his wrists. His chin was tipped up to watch his handiwork, leaving the vulnerable line of his throat exposed to Seth's eyes, to his teeth if he chose to lean in and mark or rend the soft skin laid bare before him.

"Too bad I got so much more important shit to do," Dean said, voice deep and warm in the way that Seth had always felt in the center of his chest. "Coulda had an awful lotta fun with you like this."

The cuff around his right wrist swung free, and the limb fell gracelessly to his side, so much dead weight. He couldn't bite back on his sudden hiss at the prickling pain that came with returning circulation. The other shackle opened, and Dean caught his arm and steadied him as the soles of his boots settled flush against the floor again and his legs protested as they took back his full weight. For a moment he was nothing more than the singing nerves of his shoulders and the tremble that radiated along both of his arms and the shallow gasps of his breath. When he came back to himself, he found his forehead resting against Dean's shoulder, still-numb fingers curled into the coarse fabric of the guard's uniform. Dean held himself stiffly, but hadn't shoved him away, didn't move out of his grasp, in fact, until Seth had drawn himself up as straight as he could.

Roman was still sitting on the floor, back now pressed to the wall, looking as haggard as Seth had ever seen him, but his eyes had cleared, and Seth caught him watching them thoughtfully as Dean loosed hold of his arm and drew back from him.

While Seth grimaced at the torn skin of his wrists and tried to shake and flex the sting of pins and needles from his hands, Dean dropped back to Roman's level and reached inside the uniform coat again, this time producing a length of dark fabric. He gestured and Roman leaned forward, obediently giving Dean access to wrap and twist and tie the cloth into a makeshift sling that secured the inked arm against Roman's broad chest.

"What happened?" he asked, voice rough around the first intelligible words Seth had heard from him since they'd been made cellmates.

"Wyatt," Dean said. "Don't know more specifically than that. What I do know," he continued, pulling himself to his feet and holding a hand out to Roman, "is that I promised your girls I'd get you home to them. Whaddaya say we blow this joint?"

Roman let himself be hauled to his feet and took his turn to lean into Dean when his legs faltered beneath him.

"We need to start making tracks," Dean said and shifted to tuck himself into Roman's left side, draping Roman's free arm over his shoulders, while his own hands settled at Roman's waist and wrist. "You good to go?"

Roman nodded wearily, and Dean started steering them toward the cell door. "You coming, Golden Boy?"

Seth nodded and stooped to retrieve the length of chain that had secured his ankle and draped it over one burning shoulder. With his arms leaden and wracked with spasms, he would be just shy of useless in a fight with any actual guards, but he felt steadier with a weapon at the ready.

He trailed at the rear of their party, Dean dragging them down an eccentric path that wound along the corridors of the dungeons, through secret passages Seth had walked past dozens of times without so much as suspecting, into a series of cool underground storehouses. Apart from a few tense moments crouching behind a shelf of preserves while a porter chased a giggling scullery maid into one of the castle's pantries, they met no danger along the way, which was just as well, since Seth could see Roman's strength beginning to flag, his steps shuffling along the floors more often, Dean bearing up to take more of his weight. The big man wouldn't be able to flee much further under his own steam. Neither would he, Seth admitted to himself grudgingly.

Finally, they arrived at a heavy wooden door, and Dean produced another ring of keys and worked the stiff lock, opening the door to reveal a tunnel cut into the earth and gradually sloping upward. Sunlight, warm and dazzling, filtered toward them along its length, and they trudged out into it, coming to the surface just beyond the castle walls.

Seth had just begun to despair at the thought of hacking a trail through the eastern woods when he spotted the wagon parked in the shade, hitched to a team of strong horses from the palace stables, with a pair of familiar figures propped against its side.

Roman stopped short, apparently recognizing them too, and Dean barked out a tired laugh. "It's good, my man. Believe it or not, this is our ride."

They pushed on toward the wagon, Mercury and Noble trading nods with Dean as they passed him by on their way to meet Seth. Jamie and Joey reached him and two sets of arms wrapped around him tight.

"We gotcha now, Boss," Jamie murmured, hand rubbing easy circles between his shoulder blades, and Seth realized that he was shaking. Not just the exhausted quiver of overtaxed muscle, but every part of him quaking in relief while his breath hitched in his chest.

Another hand - Joey's - lifted the length of chain from his shoulder and gently pushed matted curls away from his face. "We've got a pretty good set-up here, Seth," he said. "This rig's got a false bottom. Once you guys are stashed in the secret compartment, we ride out, and you're nowhere to be found when the Beast shows up."

"It's a good plan, boys," he said, knowing that they'd hear the praise as a _thank you_ , and let them steer him toward the wagon, where he saw that Roman and Dean had already eased themselves into the hidden compartment.

He accepted Jamie and Joey's boost into the bed, not entirely trusting his own arms to support him yet, and ducked through the hidden trapdoor to lie down in the shadowy compartment, wedging himself clumsily between Ambrose and the wall.

Jamie handed a canteen down into the close space. "Y'all need anything else before I close the lid?"

"We're good, Jamie," he said quietly.

The wagon's false floor slid into place over their heads, blocking out the light.

"Well, ain't this cozy," Dean grumbled. Roman's chuckle, mirthless and worn, filled the compartment around them.

There was the sound of bales of hay, crates of produce, and other commonplace cargo being shifted into place above them as camouflage, and then they were in motion. It was hard to keep track of their route, and at a certain point Seth gave up even trying and just let himself drift, the swaying momentum of the wagon throwing them all this way and that, alternately pressing him tight into Dean's side and pulling them apart.

They halted once, and though the voices were muffled, Seth understood that they had reached a checkpoint. Dean's hand landed on his stomach, the weight of his broad palm a silent _stay cool_.

As he listened, Jamie began an indignant rant: just who did these guards think they were? Did they know who they were harrassing?

Joey was harder to make out, with his reasonable tone and normal volume, but the key was, "If you're sure you want to delay the King's business, on today of all days, then I guess we can't stand in your way..."

In another moment, they were back on the move, a celebratory drumbeat being tapped out on the crates over their heads a couple of minutes further down the road.

The road was long, and Seth felt himself beginning to tighten up, muscles protesting this sudden confinement after having been so overworked, and tried, to little avail, to shift and stretch in the small space.

"And people used to say I couldn't sit still," Dean groused, then shifted to loop his arm around Seth, making a place for Seth's head to rest on his shoulder. It didn't exactly solve the problem, but he turned into the hold anyway. Dean smelled of salt and leather and the past, and tucked into his side, Seth fell into the soundest sleep he'd had in more than a year on the palace's silk sheets.

 

 

"Up and at 'em," Dean rumbled in his ear, shifting away from him as the sounds of freight being shifted carried down from overhead. Seth tried to choke back a moan and held himself as still as possible, his every muscle screaming.

When the trapdoor slid back from the top of the compartment, night was setting in, the last of the sunset bruising the horizon while an array of stars and a nearly-full moon emerged above.

One of Roman's cousins leaned into the doorway. "Uce," he said warmly, and reached a hand down to Dean, who took it and hauled himself up.

Roman rolled sluggishly toward Seth, tired eyes full of warning, and let the hands that reached down from above guide him to the surface.

Seth sucked in a sharp breath and rose to his knees, leaning his elbows against the ledge of the trapdoor and taking in the night around them. The wagon had stopped at the edge of a campsite: the caravans and sturdy tents of Roman's extended family ranged in a wide arc around a central bonfire and a series of smaller cooking fires, banked low under heavy iron pots.

He watched as Dean pressed a kiss to Roman's head and turned him over to the receiving line of cousins and aunties and other relatives who had arrived to conduct him toward the heavy silver healing tent set on a rise a little way's distant from the camp proper. Roman's wife squeezed Dean's hand before hurrying along at Roman's side, and his mother stopped for a longer beat, taking Dean's face between her small hands and saying words too soft for Seth to make out into the messy curls at his temple.

Jamie and another cousin had unhitched the horses and were leading them toward the camp's animals for water and rest. Joey appeared at his side and patted his back encouragingly as he clambered up from the compartment and out of the wagon's bed with a minimum of pathetic whimpering.

By the time his feet hit the soft ground beside the wagon, he found he'd run through whatever reserves of energy he might have rebuilt during sleep. Dully, hunched like a much older man, he wound through the camp in the wake of the thin teenage boy who seemed to have been assigned to keep a wary eye on them.  Joey stuck close, occasionally steering him straight with a nudge at his hip.

"Hunter's going to be looking for you now. You and Jamie both," he said without preamble.

"Probably," Joey agreed.

"Why'd you do it? You didn't have to make my trouble yours."

"We're mercenaries or whatever."  He shrugged.  "But we're people, too.  It was the right thing to do."

Seth nodded absently and tried to remember what it felt like, to know the right thing and do it.

"Besides which," Joey added, "somebody had to look out for you. You do kind of a lousy job of it yourself."

He slung a heavy arm around Joey's neck, the sentiment worth the pull on his shoulders, and laughed, cackling and a little hysterical even to his own ears. "Fair enough."

 

 

He let himself be steered to one of the simple log benches arrayed around the campfire and sank onto it before his legs gave out beneath him.  Joey perched beside him and broke out a kit of bandages and ointments, pushing up one of Seth's sleeves and turning over his hand to examine his wrist, with its bracelet of angry red bruising and sluggishly bleeding scrapes and scratches.  

Jamie let out a soft hiss as he crouched in front of them with a canteen.  "We're real sorry about these, Boss.  Shouldn't'a happened on our watch," he drawled, and poured cool, clear water over the broken skin. 

Seth flinched and swallowed the piteous noise that tried to well up in his throat, "Nah," he said thickly, "they'd have turned on me with or without you.  Just the way of the world."

Joey looked at him sadly and Seth dropped his eyes to the flames.  Jamie stood and smoothed his hair back, tucking Seth's head against his stomach for a long moment before he walked over to a pair of Roman's uncles stationed at one of the steaming cauldrons.

"It doesn't have to be that way, you know," Joey said, smearing a thick layer of ointment over his skin with gentle fingers.  "Not always.  Not for everyone."

Seth sighed as Joey wound a length of clean bandage around his wrist.  "Maybe not."  He didn't have it in him to add that it had always been that way for him while Joey was tending his wounds with no reward in sight.       

Joey finished his work in silence, and Seth let himself drift, pain and exhaustion competing for his attention.  Jamie returned and pressed a mug of tea, hot and sharp-smelling, into his hands. It was only after he had taken in half of it - soothing in his throat and sweeter than expected - that he realized it must be medicinal, blunting the sharp teeth of his pain, making his aches recede into the distance.

He nursed another mouthful and checked back in to the scene around him: Jamie making their babysitter laugh with a story about his own enormous family tree. Joey, positioned to keep both Jamie and Seth in sight, raising his own cup in greeting when Seth caught his eye. Groups of women with grey eyes and deep laughs and sturdy men with inked sleeves coming and going, busy even as full dark settled in around them.  Dean, having shed the guard's coat, his white shirt luminous under the moonlight, taking a knee to put himself on a level with Roman's daughter, letting her chatter animatedly at him and throw her arms around his neck.

Seth had a sudden, clear memory of tiny fingers braiding flowers into his hair while Roman and Dean chuckled in the flickering light of a different campfire. She'd grown so much, and he wondered if she had any memory of Uncle Seth. He hoped not; it would be kinder if she had forgotten.

Dean lifted the girl easily and gave her a twirl before depositing her back in the doorway of her grandparents' wagon.  When she had withdrawn inside, he looked back toward the fire, finding Seth as though he'd felt the weight of his eyes on him, and stalked across the camp toward him, pausing in his course to sling a satchel over his shoulder and snag a lantern from a worktable.

"You," he said, pointing at Seth. "You're coming with me."

"I am, huh?" he asked, the sneer audible in his voice at odds with the way he was hauling himself stiffly to his feet almost before the words had left his mouth.

"Sure looks that way, Grandpa."

"Don't think we won't mount a search party if you don't bring him back, Ambrose," Joey said, tone friendly enough but not entirely jesting. 

"C'mon, Champ, if your nursemaids let you come out and play, I promise I'll make it worth your while."  Dean smirked, and walked past the fire and toward the rise south of the camp without once looking back to see if Seth would follow, as though he already knew that he would. He'd always thought he knew Seth coming and going; that was half the reason it'd been so easy to take him by surprise when the time came. The thought was a little less satisfying than it had once been, and Seth found himself taking up a quicker step, lest Dean pull too far away to follow.

Dean exchanged a few words and a round of secret handshakes with the sentries on duty - another cousin of Roman's and her two young sons, all of them eying Seth coolly - and led him beyond the edge of the encampment, slowing his steps up the gentle slope enough that Seth was able to keep pace even on his increasingly rubbery legs. When they crested the low hill, the moonlight caught on the placid surface of a pool of water below, and Dean began tacking their path toward it.

When they had descended the other side of the low hill and reached the edge of the pool, Seth saw that delicate clouds of steam rose up from the surface and swirled into the night air: a hot spring.  He tried to call to mind a map of the kingdom to give himself some small idea of just how far they had come in the wagon.

Ambrose dropped the satchel unceremoniously to the ground and set the lantern on a large, flat rock that seemed to have been placed by the water's edge for just such a purpose. He looked out over the water, silver and gold in the light from the moon and the lantern, and broke the stillness and the silence only by drumming restless fingers against his own collarbone. Seth thought of all the times he'd reached out to still Dean's hands and wondered what might happen if he were to try it now.

Instead, he asked, "So, you stopped the Beast from turning me into blood pudding because you wanted the chance to drown me first?"

"Don't think I haven't thought about it," Dean said without looking at him. "Way I figure it, me and Roman are kinda owed first crack at you."

Seth didn't have an answer for that, so he tossed out new questions instead.  "So, why didn't you leave me behind? Wouldn't that have been really satisfying for you?"

Dean scoffed. "What, hearing you beg? For old times' sake?"

Seth wanted to be indignant at that remark, but he also wanted to savor the slow flicker of heat it put in his belly, and while those impulses warred with each other, Dean turned toward him with an eloquent sigh and continued.

"You're here because sometimes I'm really not any brighter than you give me credit for." He stalked a few steps closer and grabbed Seth's upper arms, jarring his achy shoulders and making him suck in a harsh breath. "If you're a mistake, this is the last time I make it," he said, fingers digging hard into muscle, pulling Seth in close. "You hurt Roman again, or any of his people, or, hell, you sell out your little henchmen one more time, and you won't have to worry about the Queen or the King or the Conqueror, because I will end you myself. You understand that?"

Dean's face was twisted into a snarl, and Seth's breath caught again when he tried to meet his wounded gaze. He closed his eyes and gave a feeble nod and felt Dean's grip loosen fractionally.

"You didn't mention yourself," he said, his voice coming out smaller than he'd intended. "What happens when I hurt you?"

Dean laughed, hollow and humorless. "Think the ship has sailed on that one; don't you?"

Before Seth could answer, Dean's hands let go of his arms and landed in the center of his chest, giving him a hearty shove that set his feet stumbling and propelled him through the empty air and into the spring behind him. The water closed around him heavy and warm, and even though he was startled, his feet found the solid bottom of the pool, his head breaking the water when he stood.

"You - you're a lunatic!" he spluttered, pushing wet hair back from his face. "You could have killed me!"

"Maybe keep that in mind, then," Dean returned mildly and sat down to tug off his boots.

Seth toed off his own now waterlogged boots and tossed them out onto dry ground. He should be livid; there was water up his nose and his clothes - black silk embroidered with gold that the palace tailor had spent an entire day finishing and fitting to his body as though he were a new setting in the crown jewels - were surely ruined.  Along with the careful dressings Joey had made on each of his wrists, now soggy.

But, the water was also pleasantly hot, drawing the aches out of him in time with the pounding of his heart, and Dean was laughing at him again, soft, but rich and genuine. Real in a way that Seth had rarely seen or felt over the last year.

"You've just ruined the only suit of clothes I own now," he groused, struggling a little to maintain his tone when he realized that Dean was methodically removing the rest of the guard's uniform, exposing the planes and angles of his body to the night air and Seth's gaze. "I should probably kick your ass or something."

"You should be thanking me," Dean said, and jumped into the pool without warning, making a splash that sent a slosh of water into Seth's face. When Seth recovered, Dean was grinning at him, a little feral, but warm, too, a dimple carving itself deep in his cheek.  Invitation? Benediction? "When you take those off, people - me included - are only gonna want to punch your face in, like, half as much as they do now."

It was hard to be dignified, with his wet hair plastered to his face and the material clinging and constricting as he reached for the fastenings, but somehow he managed a knowing smirk. "That the only reason you want to get me out of these clothes, Ambrose?"

Dean darted forward, wound his fists into the material of his shirt and pulled until a jagged rent formed in the fabric over Seth's heart and spread to split the garment collar to tail.  He leaned in to drag the fabric down his shoulders, and his breath ghosted over Seth's cheek when he spoke. "My life would be so much simpler if it was."

Wound up in this half-embrace and the remnants of his own shirt, Seth was left with no place to go and less desire to get there.  He tilted his head, tipping his forehead to rest against Dean's; he'd half-expected him to shrink away and was taken aback when he leaned into the contact instead.  "You wouldn't know what to do with 'simple' anyway," he said, softer than he'd said anything to Dean since they'd stopped being brothers.

"But I do remember what to do with you," Dean rumbled, and freed Seth's arms from his sodden sleeves at the same time as he walked him back toward the edge of the water.

The stone that formed the pool's side had absorbed and held the warmth of the spring's water and radiated that soothing heat into Seth's frame where Dean had pinned his back and shoulders to its worn-smooth surface.  He gave a sudden sob of relief into the sharp kiss Dean pressed to his lips. 

Dean's hands came up to frame his face and stroke over his hair - comfort alongside their kisses - and Seth wondered which of them Dean thought was most in need of consolation.  

When Dean moved to break away, Seth surged up to follow him, winding his fingers into the damp curls at the base of his neck.  He'd never stopped wanting this - Dean, solid in his arms and close enough to breathe him in.  He'd thought, for a while, that he might be strong enough to sacrifice these moments, but he'd never once stopped missing them, longing roosting in his hollow chest like a bird that fluttered restlessly with the dawn and plucked at his heart in idle moments. 

His own life would have been much simpler if he could have torn Dean out of it.  Pity for them both that he'd never known what to do with 'simple' either.  

Dean let him hold the kiss for a few beats more, but he had the better leverage and less-recent wounds, and eventually he twisted them apart, though his hands stayed at Seth's neck, thumbs tucked against the line of his jaw.  Seth trailed a hand down his back, skimming over toughened scar tissue and supple muscle, and was less gratified than he wanted to be to find that Dean was shaking against him.

Dean sighed heavily and sought his gaze. "You regret anything?"

He let his hand settle against Dean's hip and relished being allowed to touch this way without having buried each other beneath a throne room's worth of furniture first. "Truth?" he asked.

"Pretty much done with you lying to me," Dean said hollowly, and Seth closed his own eyes against the naked hurt in Dean's.

He swallowed. "Some of it. Not everything."  He was braced for Dean to jerk away from him, leave him as alone as he probably deserved, but instead, he stayed still, the long line of his body pressed into Seth's. Finally, almost afraid to break the spell that had kept Dean in his arms, he asked, "Is that enough?"

"It probably shouldn't be." Dean chuckled grimly and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "But, for now, I'll take it."


End file.
